Laura Ingalls Wilder Meets Common Core

When I was a child, in 3rd grade, I fell in love with Little House in the Big Woods. I distinctly remember locating it in the little classroom library. I am not sure if I read it before or after Caddie Woodlawn, another fine chapter book about strong pioneer girls. There were no benchmarks—I don’t recall even doing a book report.

Now, if you Google Little House in the Big Woods you will find a gazillion ways to address the Common Core. The books are considered a must read, and it appears that if you aren’t exposed to reading them, early on, you will not go far in life. There are even picture books to pave the way for the chapter books to make sure teachers and their students don’t flub up and miss out.

Those books were not made to appear like I would be a failure if I didn’t read them when I was young. No one warned me that I wouldn’t be able to get into Harvard if I didn’t read them. I, quite frankly, never heard of Harvard or any other college in third grade.

When I first read Little House in the Big Woods, I wasn’t made to learn about Laura Ingalls Wilder the author, or given a whole long list of vocabulary words out of the book to define. I didn’t have to locate descriptive words—no one graded me down if I didn’t know what quinine meant.

I didn’t have to identify alliteration and the syllables in the words. I didn’t need to prove I could identify singular and plural nouns or the parts of speech. I wasn’t made to go back and describe the cliffhangers, although I probably did tell my little friends about some of them. I didn’t even have to write about the story using graphic organizers.

I only remember yearning for time after school and on the weekend to be able to immerse myself in the story. And, much to my delight, when I finished Little House in the Big Woods, I discovered On the Banks of Plum Creek!

I am not saying that it isn’t nice to learn additional things surrounding a novel. I think older students might benefit from this, and younger children might enjoy learning facts about a story. I read MaryPoppins to my daughter after she saw the movie, and we both got a kick out of learning the meaning of a perambulator. Children are usually naturally curious.

But it is the whole crisis idea behind Common Core…the benchmarks and scaffolding…the outrageously wordy micromanagement, applied to teaching, that we should all question. It is the marketing of programs that promise to fill every child with all the knowledge, we are told, children will ever need, so they won’t disgrace their country and be economic losers in the long run.

This message–if children are not presented the Laura Ingalls Wilder books this way–they will surely fail, is a wrong message. It is harmful to children and discourages them from the pure, great joy of reading.

I read these books in the 1950s. And children have learned to read in public schools for years since then. There was never any real crisis. Certainly, there will be children who have difficulty learning to read, and they will need extra assistance. But from what I’ve seen, and as a teacher who once worked with middle and high school students with reading difficulties, Common Core isn’t it.

A while back I returned to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series and finished reading the books about when she became an adult. I was just as excited about reading them, at this time, as I was when I was a child.

That is the beauty of the joy of learning. It should never leave you. But I don’t think I would have ever cared to return to those books if I’d had to learn about them originally with Common Core strategies. It would have seemed like too much of a chore.

Comments

Once again, Nancy, you hit the nail on the head. Close reading has its place, but its place isn’t to take over the entire ELA curriculum from pre-K through college. Sad to say, I never read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, but I managed to graduate from college and get a Master’s degree. The book that launched me on my way as a voracious reader in fourth grade was Black Beauty. Looking back, I think that because the book was so sad that I actually cried when reading it, it marked the beginning of my life as a reader. Without an emotional connection, what is the point of reading? Without context, what is the point of reading? David Coleman is totally wrong about what kind of instruction children need, and in particular what kind of reading instruction, and his fingerprints are all over the Common Core ELA standards. This is beyond tragic–it is abusive and bordering on criminal.

As far as Coleman…he never was a teacher. He is no expert on English/LA. Now he is president of the College Board where he will align CCSS to the SAT! If you want to pass the SAT you need to follow the CCSS. They really covered the bases didn’t they?

I worked at ETS for several years (1988-90) on the SAT-Verbal, so was interested to see your comment on the College Board connection. At that time I saw the vast number of teachers nationwide facing career problems with an incessant drive to generate “new” curricula guidelines, school by school, district by district, state by state. Careers depend in “progress,” so I am more saddened than surprised that whatever worked for “us” would never pass official muster today, or tomorrow…career advancement for new professionals makes the intense micromanagement (“improvement”) of instructional standards and measurement toolkits for every subject at all grade levels regrettably inexorable.

No reason not to expect distance ed and online learning to make classroom instruction just another choice for “consumers of education.” Soon we will see some retiree-skewed small town pitch a budget that eliminates their brick & mortar school and staff in favor of laptops, wifi, and tuition credits to some all-levels online home-school provider for all school-age residents. Embracing the future indeed!

Ellie, I think you’re right. Children learned unavoidable GRIT in the pioneer days. Over-testing children and creating lousy school conditions unnecessarily, doesn’t develop real GRIT in children today but terrible frustration. But it is compared to the pioneer GRIT like you imply. Sad. But thank you for pointing out the comparison.

Nancy, the entwining of Little House and education reform is no accident. Indeed, it is inevitable. If it hadn’t been for the editing wizardry or Laura’s daughter, Rose, Laura’s stories might never have seen the light of day. But Rose was always pushing to politicize her parents’ lives, and when she came to control the “Little House” fortune, Rose funded the Libertarian movement and directly influenced the Koch Brothers.

“The Little House books barely mention the obvious, which is that the impoverished Ingallses never could have gone to Dakota Territory without a government grant: Like most pioneers, their livelihoods relied on the federal Homestead Act, which gave settlers 160 acres for the cost of a $14 filing fee—one of the largest acts of federal largesse in US history.”

I see the effects of CC every day in my boys’ lives. It started with the technique that they changed to to teach reading (no more memorization of words but nonsense words to teach sounds!) which messed up my Asperger child’s learning of spelling and slowed down his reading. Then the mandatory AR testing, every day, in the school with mandatory books to choose from. So my little man who didn’t “get” fiction was only presented with nonsensical readings that he despised and therefore I had to “force” to read. I learned from him and my 2nd child didn’t have the same stresses and I learned the school wasn’t ‘teaching’ reading so I did it more at home. That helped both of the boys, so that by the 3rd grade, I freed them up to read whatever they wanted. My Asperger child chose, to my delight, Harry Potter, and read the first book very quickly, yet the school tried to tell him he couldn’t test on it for AR because it was “too advanced” for where they had tested him to read at. Luckily I had a good report with his teacher and we quickly undid that and let him test. Now, 2 years later, my boys are learning to love to read but no where near where they might have been if they had not been immersed in CC. I tell them I want them to read because they “get it”, they love the story and want to see what happens next, not to regurgitate facts and thoughts and such from the books. Myself, I was reading books like Black Beauty by the 3rd grade, reading above my grade level, and never did a book report, test or other event on this “fun” reading, yet by English scores all throughout school, to include College, was off the chart. I say that if you can develop a love of reading, the more you read, the more you will naturally “get” and learn without knowing it, and THAT is what will help you through life…. not what CC is trying to force into these young minds!

My mother had written to Laura Ingalls Wilder when my mother was in junior high, and received a reply, encouraging her to read more. .My parents began reading the Little House books to me when I was 5. . I have traveled to several of the locations in the stories. My own children did not care for the books as much as I did, but they did grow up with me reading them to them. My children were out of school before Common Core, but they were still required to read books for points, highlight lines, write summaries. There was no time to just read for fun. My children don’t have a passion for reading like I do.

Every year I read 2 books to my students. They are both by Christopher Paul Curtis. I read “Bud, Not Buddy” and “The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963”. Curtis is a genius at writing books that are descriptive, compelling, and that don’t treat children like idiots.
There is a moment in each of the books where I cry as I read to the children. It is not planned or staged. I just can’t help myself. If you’ve ever read these masterpieces, you know what I’m talking about. I do not test the children in any way, although I can’t help but seize upon “teachable moments”. What do you expect? I’m a teacher.
We don’t write summaries or book reports about them. We do talk about how the students visualize the characters, settings, and events in the story. We refer back to these visualizations when we are learning comprehension skills in our regular reading lessons. We call them “the movie in your mind”.
This has become important to me over the last few words because I had a vision of my own. I saw a student of mine as an adult. She was a surgeon and had a wonderful husband and children, and she was at a party, drinking a glass of fine wine and chatting with her friends about her 4th grade teacher. She said, “The thing I remembered most about him was the way he progress monitored me.” …Wait a minute. That’s not what she said at all. What she said was, “He instilled, in me, a lifetime love of reading.” Yeah, that’s it.
We have to keep our eyes on the prize. I have no intention of teaching to data points. I just want to help human beings grow. And although we may be “behind” some countries like China (if you believe that skewed piece of data), I shudder to think of this amazing girl growing up and working in a factory that has to employ suicide nets to keep people from jumping to their deaths AT WORK!

You bring up several interesting points. I like the visualizations and wonder if, by doing this with your students, you will help create future novel writers. I love creative writing and the “movie in your mind” reminds me of this.

I am glad you don’t over focus on the data. I have never bought into the notion that China has a better education system. Yong Zhao has a new book out about this that I am looking forward to reading. Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?

If we get rid of our economic system which relies on profit to survive,..insatiable money on the backs of others…we take back our education, our health care, our schools, our kids, our colleges, our politkcal system, our town halls, our housing, our lives. It is the fucking system.

You can still watch ” little house on the prairie” on Hallmark channel in the afternoons. I never get tird of watching it. The bobbsey twins, Nancy drew and the hardy boys were enjoyable books of that time too. Common Core isn’t about education at all. research it…it’s a doctrine of devils created to brain wash and dumb down our children and grand children and prepare them for,Islam indoctrination by our government. It’s a take over from liberal secular humanistic atheist who hate Chrisrians and Jews. Our students MUST pray to Allah, wear the jihab headgear and bow down to a false god while attending school.They are accumulating personal information from every child from cradle to grave. The teachers are told to tell our children to trust only in them and not their parents because their parents don’t understand CC math and are not teachers. In other words it is turning kids against their parents. There are wonderful videos available to back this all up. Yeachers are rebelling against this evil agenda and many states are banning hot he common core totally. Careful who approves of CC….. Some of them are Presidental candidates like Jeb bush. We must all warn everyone we know…our families, neighbors, friends and job acquaintances . I REFUSE TO CHOOSE COMMON CORE is an organization spreading the danger so CC. Everyone must be alerted and stopped.

Hi Carol, Even though he only focused on the prairie, I think Michael Landon did a wonderful job with that show. I remember the Bobbsey Twins and I think I read every Nancy Drew book. The old ones were the best!

I must respectfully disagree with you, however, about the description of the religious aspect of Common Core. My take is that it is an arrogant idea as to how schools should be run, meant to make a lot of money. I think many in business bought into the idea that public schools were failing a long time ago. When you succeed in business you might believe you know how to fix schools. Poor schools had problems, but most schools functioned pretty well. And business ideology applied to schools doesn’t work well. Children are not a product. We also do need to be careful how data is used. Test information should be private and personal for parents, students and teachers.

But I agree that we need something different in our schools. Learning is a beautiful process and teaching is a grand profession.

I had to jump in. I have been teaching English in high school and mostly in middle school for almost 40 yrars. I’m am so disheartened to see the murder of education. School is no longer about learning and discovery. It has become a race to the top number. I have always told my students that I want them thinking, not just getting the “right” answer – whatever that means.
I hated reading as a child, because I was a slow reader, However, when I found something that I could see the movie in my head, I was snagged. I continue to tell my students to see the movie in their heads.
Children need to get back to discovering, and that takes time and it means it is okay if they don’t know what the answer will be. I am saddened that I am leaving education at such a low point. I know my students of 7 years ago were better educated than the students I have now. They were thinking. ..

Carol, I must agree with Nancy and disagree with your take regarding the supposed religious aspects of Common Core. Personally, I am a liberal, humanistic, Jewish Unitarian, and I am totally opposed to the Common Core “standards” because they are a pedagogical disaster. In my view, this is a neoliberal assault on the public sphere, with the goal of privatization of a public good–our public school system. I am aware that many people are concerned by what they believe to be a socialistic/communistic/Muslim takeover of American values in the Common Core. I see no evidence for this, and I have been researching the Common Core for several years. What I do see is an out of control arrogance on the part of elites who promote a technocratic vision for our children that benefits global corporations like Pearson and Microsoft. I also believe that the process by which the Common Core and associated testing were developed and foisted on the country by Bill Gates and the federal Department of Education is fundamentally anti-democratic.

I discovered the Little House series quite by accident when I was 11 or 12. They were definitely not aimed at boys back in the day (The early 80’s). I read each one non-stop, and then moved on to the Anne of Green Gables series. It was reading for the pure joy of reading. And it fired a love of reading that is still there.
By simply reading, you learn a lot just by absorbing. Do I know all the correct terminology for grammar and sentence structure? No. But I can write a darn fine sentence!

Glenn, thank you! I showed the Anne of Green Gables movie to my students in middle school after it came out. It is a great film, and it steered many of my students to the books. And that included the guys. I had similar results with The Secret Garden. Certain books and characters have universal appeal.

As a teacher and a mom, I am so disheartened as to how our children are being used and how my colleagues and I are being attacked. Our children will one day grow up to be in charge of this world. I for one want them to not only worry about making money and keeping up in a global economy, I want them to understand the beauty of literature and to understand the importance of history. The irony of the common core and its implementation is that history is repeating itself, and we are no longer allowed to teach history. It’s all about the global economy. As you wrote, our leaders are not looking at the true issues that affect education. It doesn’t benefit them if they do.
We now have kindergartners and first graders dissecting reading passages. Laura Ingalls Wilder, as a teacher, an author and a mom would have been mortified. One parent once told me that I had a reputation as “the teacher who inspired the students to love to read.” This is one of the greatest compliments I have received. I refuse to let Common Core change me. I’ll probably lose my job one day, but at least I’ll know that my former students didn’t exit grade school as robots, and they enjoy reading!

Nikki, I think many of us worry what kind of world our children will face. Literature, history and the arts…are all critical to a good society. I hope things will turn around soon and you can enjoy many good years of teaching and introducing your students to all that matters. Thank you.

You found Little House In the Big Woods as a 3rd-4th grader. Did you know it’s on the common core list of exemplar text for 1st grade? As a first grade teacher, I am hesitant to read it to my class. There are so many lovely picture books to read, and that most (not all, but most) of my students arent ready for Laura and Mary. We just keep expecting more and more of our little ones. Sad.

Yes, Jennifer, I did notice and it is quite troubling. Students might totally reject the books later on when they can understand them better. I love picture books, and Common Core shouldn’t push children away from them so early. I also have mixed feelings about the Little House picture books. I am not sure if they will lead young children to the books later, or if the child who reads the picture books will feel they already know the story. But you are right, children are being pushed to learn more difficult material more than ever before.

First grade? I am not a teacher; just a parent who has always loved to read. Both of my children get mildly reprimanded for reading during class when they are supposed to be doing other things. In other words, we are a family of very strong readers, and first grade seems insanely early for the Little House books to me. For kids from other families, this expectation might be the thing that makes them give up on school altogether.

My husband is a university professor. He says his constant struggle is trying to pitch his classes so that they are difficult enough to challenge students but not so difficult that students shut down in frustration. If this is an issue in college, how much more so in first grade?

Absolutely! I think that is why it is so important to allow children to browse library shelves and explore the books on their own. Children should be trusted to choose their own books often and given time to do silent reading. Teachers can nudge the reluctant reader…tell them about books that might be on their reading level. Thank you, Susan!

My mother was reading Little House in the Big Woods to me when I lost my first tooth, and I quickly read the rest of the series. I went on to earn a PH.D. in Latin literature. It’s possible I had some special ability that allowed me to love this book 3 years before most kids; or it’s possible that exposing kids to great books at an early age allows them to attain more in humanities fields. My gut feeling is the sooner the better, as long as they’re interested!

Like I said to Susan, children should be trusted to choose their own reading material as much as possible. I know they need to work on subject matter and other reading skills, but free reading should be permitted and encouraged.

Free reading was really the only reading I knew back in the50’s and 60’s. I learned so much from all the books, and just reading the encyclopedias my parents bought. One of my great delights was finding out what “cross referencing” was…looking up my favorite authors and discovering what the difference was between historical fiction, fiction, biography…. I only wish today’s chidlren were allowed to “discover” like we were.

I agree, Jill. It seems like all students are expected to have difficulties and educators are to weed out the kids who can do alright. I think it is just the opposite. Most students don’t have reading difficulties if left to enjoy reading, and for those who do, then they can get remediation. Thanks!

I fell in love with the “Little House” books starting in 2nd grade. I cannot count how many times I have reread them, and shared them with my children. My daughter has shared them with her 4 children and also purchased the t.v. series. I only asked that she read the books before watching the series. My pictures of Ma and Pa and all the characters were guided by Garth Brook’s drawings, but I provided all the rest. As a teacher I tried to choose books for my students that hadn’t been made into movies so they had that experience to use their imagination. Sadly, that is not a core curriculum expectation. I had to stop teaching 2 years ago because my values and beliefs as a teacher conflicted with time it took to write 20 IEP’s running to 35 pages. I had a gift of creativity that is no longer valued in teaching. It broke my heart.

Excellent. However, I used to show a movie to lead to the book, especially for students who had difficulties reading. But I do applaud what you are saying, and if you can read the book first it is better. I read Gone with the Wind before I saw the movie and the differences really stood out.

And 35 pages for an IEP now!? Such a great accountability measure being overdone.

And your point about teacher creativity is right on! I fear one of these days we will find we only have adults who monitor children on the computers.

I was lucky to read these books as a child and did not look for deeper meaning or government overtones. They were just a wonderful story of the settling of our country from a child’s point of view to other children. The dissection of literature needs to wait many years for the love of reading to develop. Had I needed to do all that core curriculum demands of today’s children, I would not have developed the love of books, the imagination, the anticipation, that I have today. Even though I used to decry homeschooling as a public school teacher, today I applaud those parents who have taken a stand about the dumbing down, the cookie cutter expectations, of education today. We need to foster the thinking skills of our children, not their ability to regurgitate memorized information.

My husband and I both reread the Little House books as adults when we moved out to Laura Ingalls Wilder land. Isn’t it quite a different take as an adult? They seem so much more dark, and Pa seems a bit crazy.

If you don’t remember a teacher getting killed by his students, then you probably didn’t read Farmer Boy. I often think of that passage when people talk about the good old days when students respected their teachers!

Oh no! Well I am quite sure I didn’t read Farmer Boy. I do own a copy, but I think it is the one book I missed. I am a sucker for pioneer stories, but I know that time period was pretty gritty. I don’t think I would have enjoyed living then! I remember Pa as not wanting to settle down. I don’t think he was the same version as Michael Landon! Thanks for the warning, Susan.

Amen! I also discovered these books in 3rd grade and it changed my life forever; from becoming a passionate life-long reader, a lover of history, a teacher and a lifetime Laura groupie. This makes me so sad to hear about how they are taking these books and creating Common Core activities designed solely to make kids hate the books and hate reading. Unbelievable!

FWIW, this practice has not been done just in Common Core. It has been a regular practice to correlate a popular book into other areas of the curriculum, drawing on the interest in the book to expand into other subjects. Various publishers put out a variety of materials to be used with a myriad of children’s literature.

I have tears in my eyes. You have illustrated the insanity of all of this poorly developed and horribly implemented education reform perfectly. I too loved Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read and reread her books as a child in the sixties and again as a classroom teacher for almost thirty years. I can still picture the scenes I created in my mind. I remember Laura holding her corn husk doll as she played in her cozy attic while Pa readied for winter. It was pure joy. Just joy. Nothing else. No added work. No added stress. No application to this standard or to that standard. It was my joy when I was a child and when I was teaching. How I hope we can get back to that joy and love of learning for our children. Keep sharing. You make a difference. Thank you.

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